Parents of the HS Class of 2025 (Part 1)

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
8747

I typically don’t post on this thread, but had to respond to your post. If CMU is close enough for your son, you should look into subletting from a Pitt or CMU student in North or South Oakland. The rentals go year around, but mosr students only live in Pgh during school year, Sept to May. I know in my son’s apartment only two of them out of 5 students will stay in their apartment for the summer. (They both got interships/research positions)

I think Duquesne students rent on the South Side (of Pgh) so that’s another option.

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8748

@OctoberKate

Excellent idea. Here is a Facebook page that may be useful:

8749

Thank you and @DtheHun !

8750

Go eat at Shish when you visit Macalester. Our friend owns it, delicious food.

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8751

This is my neck of the woods- I would not want to commute from CMU to Cranberry every day! That said I have no suggestions. Slippery Rock to Cranberry would be a much easier drive. Have you looked in Ross Township? More apartments there.

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8752

Not going to lie. Cranberry is tough, but you’ve gotten some good suggestions. Just make sure that he has easy access to I-79. Oakland, where CMU and Pitt are located isn’t great for that, and Pittsburgh’s multiple bridges and tunnels mean that traffic can be unpredictable even if it looks like there should be an “easy” commute. You might want to look if there are any sublets available in downtown Pittsburgh from Point Park University kids since there is an easy on ramp downtown to I-279, leading to I-79. Another possibility would be on the North Side near Allegheny General Hospital. That’s another neighborhood where there is easy access to I-279 and potentially many sublets to be had because of med students and residents rotating in and out. Maybe even call their graduate medical education office to see if they have suggestions. Good luck!

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8753

Has anybody paid enrollment deposit and not joined the school. We are worried we will lose out on housing options, but D25 has 1 more decision she is waiting for.

8754

Thanks @AnonMomof2 and @MoEscapee for the insights - one of my struggles is that I just don’t know the geography at all. So this is helpful to give me some starting points.

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8755

We have paid an enrollment deposit for the school that S25 is feeling most likely about. There was a big advantage to depositing and getting a housing form completed by March 1 at that school, and if he changes his mind, we are only out about $75 because the rest is refunded if it’s before May 1.

But I think you’ll have to read the “fine print” and see what advantage you gain with an earlier deposit date (at some schools there is no housing advantage to earlier deposit), and how much if any of the deposit you get back if your student changes their mind.

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8756

if they don’t make this easy, then that is on them. I am not going out of my way to help them. And I assume they don’t care to know if they don’t add a button to their portal.

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8757

S25 got some good news today: in at Oberlin and at Case (with merit $$ in both instances). This definitely softens the blow of not getting into Cal Poly, UCSD, or UC Irvine.

And now the process of discernment needs to begin – because the last few schools outstanding are either super-duper long shots (Cal, UCSB) or schools that he doesn’t like as much as the ones he has now gotten into (Brandeis, Lafayette, Cal Poly Pomona). Oh, and Purdue. We keep forgetting about Purdue. Let’s put that on in the long shots bucket.

UW feels like the shiny new object. From the kid perspective, it’s a super respectable choice, one that many of his friends would be proud to make. It enables him to stay on the West Coast, which I think is a bit of a cultural safety zone for our Bay Area boy. From our perspective, it’s a city we love, a short flight/long drive away, with an uncle and good friends nearby. And the campus seems gorgeous. So why wouldn’t we just be done?

My friend (a biomechanical engineering professor at Stanford who used to teach at UCSD) came over today and we talked for a long time. She talked about how her daughter started at Mt Holyoke expecting to study political science or maybe history, but stumbled into a biology class first semester that she absolutely loved. About how that professor saw potential in her daughter and encouraged her, and now two years later she’s doing summer research fellowships and talking about applying to PhD programs. My friend talked about what it was like to teach at UCSD, where she said there were about 35 faculty in her department and they were collectively teaching 1000 undergraduates. She said that at any given time she’d have 2-3 undergrads in her lab, and those tended to be the ones who were super pushy AND were getting top grades (and she was consciously trying to accept those who were outstanding because she wanted to help them discern whether or not a career in research was right for them). She certainly wasn’t pulling in shy kids who hadn’t figured out whether research was interesting to them or not. She didn’t have the capacity and that really wasn’t the educational model at a big research university. She also wasn’t getting to know many undergrads outside of those who worked in her lab, which had implications for students seeking recommendations for master’s degree programs, too (not just those who were applying to PhD programs and envisioning careers in academic research. Incidentally, a bunch of her PhDs end up going into industry, doing things like designing the heart monitoring functions of the Apple Watch. It was a good reminder that PhDs are not just for those who want to stay in academia.)

At Stanford, where she teaches now, the situation for undergrads is much better. But still her focus is divided because she has grad students and postdocs and a big lab to run, etc. So she was encouraging our son to seriously consider UW, which she felt offered a phenomenal engineering education – but also to think about whether he was ready to self-advocate and compete for attention in an environment with a bunch of kids who were traditionally at the top of their class and might start out more confident than he is.

She also talked up the LAC physics-to-engineering graduate school pathway and had a different viewpoint on ABET certification than what I’ve commonly heard discussed around here.

Lots of food for thought!

I think S25 is going to continue to evaluate his options. We need to get to UW and see how comfortable he feels in that cultural context. We need to look again at some of the LACs on his list and rule them out. And Case (and to perhaps a lesser extent Rochester) becomes perhaps the goldilocks option. (I think WPI and Mines are almost certainly still in the mix as well for similar reasons.)

(also this week we are going to have the conversation about letting some schools go, because there are places that have accepted him that he’s almost certainly not going to attend.)

ETA I read this reddit post last night about UW and while it’s just one perspective, this combined with @tamagotchi’s report about visiting UW made me wonder about how competitive the environment would be. At Case we were told repeatedly, with pride, that gatekeeping is not a thing.

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8758

I think this is a great distillation of the pros and cons of large research universities. Top notch information.

I think, though, that sometimes people are expecting a more hands on experience at LACs…but a lot of those professors are also going to look to the top performers/self advocates as well. The advantage of the LAC is that there will be fewer students (in total) to be competing against. Competition still definitely exists for the best opportunities.

Edited to Add: My three kids all attend/attended LACs. We love LACs in our household. And all three have had incredible opportunities. They are also very good self-advocates.

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8759

This is a super helpful post in context of the decision my daughter is facing. Not LACs, but still very applicable. Thank you!

8760

Lots of good stuph here in your post for me to think more about. Appreciate you writing about these conversations and what they might mean for different types of students and research.

And BIG congrats on the Case Western acceptance :tada:!! I know it was the standout from the Tour de Blizzard, yet it had been (I think?) a waitlist. Glad to hear it is a full option now!

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8761

I wouldn’t assume all large schools experiences are going to be the same. I’d also do a deep dive on course offerings for the four year plan of study.

So glad you are able to visit!

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8762

First college visit tomorrow! S25’s acceptance to MIT was unexpected, so I offered to book a flight to MA so he could visit the school while it’s actually in session. Hoping to sit in on a class and talk to some students about life there. Hoping we get useful information and maybe create some good memories, too. . .

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8763

Chiming in on the large research university v. LAC for undergrad research conversation.

There really are advantages and disadvantages of each choice. R1s might funnel opportunities to grad students. (Although with fed funds at risk, they might need to help of unpaid/marginally compensated undergrads more than ever.) They also might have 35 professors instead of 5 at a LAC, which could mean more research possibilities even if the professors don’t know all the undergrads. In general, a large school will have a lot more going on. Sure, you might need to be more proactive. You also might have upper level courses not available at a LAC in some special interest topic. And those courses might even be small enough to connect with faculty in a meaningful way.

The LAC may be better suited to students who want a more personalized experience. And by personalized, I mean that the faculty and staff will be more hands on in helping the student find opportunities and carve their path. (A large school can also be personalized, but the onus might be more on the student.) A quiet student might be more likely to be seen. There may not be as much competition for certain research. At my institution, the summer research program is great—experience, good money, free food/housing. But it’s still competitive especially in bio and chem. It’s not as competitive in physics, but it’s also a tiny department. The faculty’s specialty might not align with a student’s interests. For non-STEM students an LAC might be one of few places students get a chance to participate in summer research or related activities. This is partially because our summer research activities aren’t entirely grant dependent. The institution makes undergraduate research a priority and funds it across disciplines. We’ve funded students to do independent projects in humanities and social science, to work with faculty on theatre productions and museum exhibits, to translate texts into English, to work with faculty on curriculum development, to participate in local development research, to help code interview data, and so on.

Bottom line is your kid should choose the environment that feels right that offers the educational experience they want.

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8764

I was talking to a friend who works at Stanford the other week. Said the grad students have shot themselves in the foot by unionizing and demanding higher wages. Now with the cuts to research funding the professors have no choice but to seek more help from undergraduates instead, because they can’t afford to hire the grad students.

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8765

I would love to hear more about that! If willing to share.

Is that being PE isn’t actually a thing a lot of engineers need in the end? (depending on focus)?

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8766

PE is really only for civil engineers.

Schools with ABET accreditation though is used as a filter for some companies in screening applicants for jobs.

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